Mark Sultan-THE SULTANIC VERSES (2007)

That Mark Sultan considered it a fine idea to dub his first solo LP The Sultanic Verses might seem stupid and/or cloying to anyone otherwise unfamiliar with the garage rock vet (and his fondness for wicked nomenclature): Sultan’s first band was christened Powersquat, his last band was called Spaceshits (featuring Skid Marks on drums!), and he’s performed under a spectrum of outrageous guises, from Needles to Von Needles to Creepy to Bridge Mixture to BBQ to Noammnn Rummnyunn to Blortz to Celeb Prenup. To supplement his solo work, Sultan also performs as half of the King Khan & BBQ Show, and in a newly reformed version of Spaceshits, known now as Les Sexareenos; comparatively speaking, The Sultanic Verses is just plain charming.

The Sultanic Verses’ 12 tracks are part-rockabilly, part-garage rock, and soaked in late 50s fuzz; Sultan runs Sultan Records from his hometown of Montreal– he’s released a handful of garage rock masterpieces from bands like the Deadly Snakes and the Daylight Lovers– and he’s clearly well-versed in both the limitations and potential euphoria of his chosen genre. Here, Sutlan plays pretty much everything himself, and the clamor consists of jangly, distorted guitar and thick, scratchy vocals. While it all starts to sound a tiny bit familiar after awhile, it’s still a glorious mess (the fact that only two songs ever manage to break the three-minute mark certainly helps). “Something Wrong” is a vaguely off-kilter homage to imperfection (“There’s something wrong/ No matter what I do/ I’m much too civilized/ There’s something wrong with you,” Sultan cackles) with a weirdly lilting chorus and a bouncy guitar melody. “Warpath” is a slightly less friendly offering: the track sounds like it was written to accompany a pocketknife throwdown at the drive-in soda fountain– think black leather jackets and blue jeans tangling into each other, girls slipping in puddles of pomade and strawberry milkshake. “Unicorn Rainbow Odyssey” (which has already been covered by Atlas Sound, the alias of Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox) channels Phil Spector’s early work with girlgroups like the Ronettes and the Crystals; “100 Little Women” is a spare– if echoing– singalong (“100 little women/ let’s rock!”).

Aesthetically-speaking, Sultan falls somewhere between the sock-hop, aw-shucks rockabilly of Buddy Holly (see also: Carl Perkins, early Elvis, Art Adams, Bobby Lee Trammell) and the darker, more perverse side of late 50s pop (see: Kip Tyler, whose 1958 flop “She’s My Witch” wouldn’t feel so out of place on The Sultanic Verses). There’s something playful and ominous about Sultan’s sound, a gentle creepiness which manages to perfectly encapsulate the whirr of teenagerdom– much as rockabilly did a half-century ago.